Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped how small RNA molecules, such as the recently Nobel Prize-awarded microRNAs, control cell development in the human embryo during the first days after ...

Despite being an essential developmental process, the understanding of human embryonic genome activation is limited, owing to the lack of in vitro cell models and ethical concerns. To advance ...

Researchers developed a method that visualizes gene activity across an entire embryo with high spatial detail. The resulting ...

Biologists have provided new insights on a longstanding puzzle in biology: How complex organisms arise from a single fertilized cell. Producing a new 'gene atlas' with 4-D imaging, the researchers ...

When the egg and sperm fuse, a comprehensive reorganization of DNA begins within the nucleus. Epigenetics plays a crucial role in this process, regulating gene activity through chemical modifications ...

How does a tiny cluster of cells become an embryo with a head, trunk, and tail? And how do thousands of genes coordinate this development? A new imaging method makes it possible to visualize the ...

Over half of our genomes consists of thousands of remnants of ancient viral DNA, known as transposable elements, which are widespread across the tree of life. Once dismissed as the "dark side" of the ...

Transposable elements are stretches of DNA that can move around the genome. Many of these DNA sequences originate from long ago, when viruses inserted their genetic material into our ancestors' ...

Researchers have discovered a key transition in early embryonic development is facilitated by decreasing levels of a viral protein inserted into the DNA of our early animal ancestors. Researchers at ...